The Texas Department of Public Safety has closed a lawsuit involving two Texas women who claimed to be violated during a roadside search last July.

The two women are Angela and Ashley Dobbs. They were pulled over for throwing cigarette butts out of their car window during a trip to Oklahoma last year. State Trooper David Farrell claimed he smelled marijuana in the car and decided to do a search. He found nothing.

Despite finding nothing, Farrell decided the women needed to be searched as well, and he called female Trooper Kelly Helleson to do the search. Here is where the problems began.

Rather than sticking to a standard pat down search, Helleson searched, quite literally, every cavity of the women's bodies. She put on a pair of latex gloves and used her fingers to search the anuses and vaginas of both women. Helleson even used the same pair of gloves for both women.

As reported in a Thursday evening, June 27, BuzzFlash at Truthout update to the chilling San Diego (SD) city attorney prosecution of Jeff Olson, an SD Judge placed an unprecedented gag order on a misdemeanor trial -- in particular muzzling Olson. But it also apparently included witnesses, the jury and others.

Judge Howard Shore also chastised the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner. Filner apparently in the judge's eyes had the temerity to call the trial of Olson a waste of time and taxpayer money. According to the San Diego Reader, Filner sent out a memorandum on June 20 that read in part:

This young man is being persecuted for thirteen counts of vandalism stemming from an expression of political protest that involved washable children's chalk on a City sidewalk. It is alleged that he has no previous criminal record. If these assertions are correct, I believe this is a misuse and waste of taxpayer money. It could also be characterized as an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment particularly when it is arbitrarily applied to some, but not all, similar speech.

Judge Shore, in essence, warned the mayor of San Diego, who happens to be a Democrat in a traditionally conservative city, to keep his comments to himself, and would likely have issued a gag order on the mayor if Judge Shore were able.

A teenager from Texas could spend the next eight years in prison if a court decides that the sarcastic comment he made during an online argument is enough to convict him of issuing a terroristic threat.

Justin Carter was only 18 years old when he and a friend got into an online spat over Facebook back in February with another person. They were arguing about the computer game "League of Legends," his dad told a local ABC affiliate, but one snarky remark made by the teen was apparently enough to raise suspicion in one woman who was watching the conversation unfold all the way up in Canada.

"Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,'" father Jack Carter told KKVUE News, "to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.'"

The Brazilian government will deploy National Public Security Force in five cities hosting the FIFA football tournament in an effort to contain the ongoing protests across the country.

The announcement by the Brazilian Justice Ministry comes after a day of violent clashes between protesters and riot police.

The ministry decided to deploy the joint federal police force on Wednesday in response to violent rioting across the country. The troops will reportedly be tasked with mediating the conflict, rather than punishing protesters.

The National Public Security Force is usually deployed in Brazil to address serious security crises, such as prison riots or major gang violence.

South Africa's ailing anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is doing much better in hospital, his ex-wife Winnie said on Friday before a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama that will include a personal homage to the globally admired statesman.

The faltering health of the first black president of South Africa, a revered symbol of racial reconciliation, has drawn world attention since the 94-year-old was rushed to hospital with a recurring lung infection nearly three weeks ago.

Earlier this week, the government reported Mandela's frail condition had turned critical, but since Thursday President Jacob Zuma has reported that his health is improving.

"I'm not a doctor, but I can say that from what he was a few days ago, there is great improvement," Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, told reporters outside Mandela's former home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

But, she added, he remained "clinically unwell".

Bono, U2′s lead singer, made headlines this week after excerpts were released from his fascinating radio interview with Focus on the Family (FOF), a Christian organization. Today, the group made available the entire exchange, offering it on the FOF website. From discussing his passion for helping the poor to detailing an intense faith in Jesus Christ, the famed musician offered up a candid - and surprising - interview.

Speaking on-air with FOF President Jim Daly, Bono offered a lens into both his personal and professional lives. Perhaps the most interesting tidbits were his statements about Jesus Christ and the gospel - favorable comments that are rarely uttered by A-list entertainers.

"So often those that struggle with accepting Jesus Christ as their savior ... it's the idea that he's the Messiah. ... how did you respond to that?," Daly asked the singer.

This video was recorded right before the recent protests started, but with all of this going on, it becomes even more evident that the World Cup and the Olympics should not be our priority. The world has to know about what's really going on. Please share.

I know this is a brief overview, so if you want to know more about the problems discussed in the video, please check the links below:


A Nova Democracia
Domínio Público
Copa pra quem?
Comitê Popular do Rio
conectas.org
theworld.org
Marcelo Lacerda

Bono the philanthropist is nothing but a crony of bankers and neocons, argues Terry Eagleton

It is no surprise that Bono and Bob Geldof, the two leading celebrity philanthropists of our time, are both Irish. The Ireland into which they were born in the 1960s was caught between third and first worlds, and so was more likely to sympathise with the wretched of the earth than were the natives of Hampstead. As a devoutly Christian nation, it also had a long missionary tradition. Black babies were a familiar object of charity in Ireland long before Hollywood movie stars began snapping them up. Bono himself was a member of a prayer group in the 1970s, before he stumbled on leather trousers and wrap-around shades. Scattered across the globe by hunger and turmoil at home, the Irish have long been a cosmopolitan people, far less parochial than their former proprietors. Small nations cannot afford the insularity of the great.

Besides, if you were born into this remote margin of Europe and yearned for the limelight, it helped to have an eye-catching cause and a mania for self-promotion. Rather as the Irish in general were forced by internal circumstance to become an international people, so men like Bono and Geldof could use their nationality to leap on to the world stage.

Bono belongs to the new, cool, post-political Ireland; but by turning back to the old, hungry, strife-torn nation, now rebaptised as Africa, he could bridge the gap between the two. Even so, he has not been greatly honoured in his own notoriously begrudging country, or elsewhere. Harry Browne recounts the (perhaps apocryphal) tale of the singer standing on stage clapping while declaring: "Every time I clap my hands, a child dies." "Then stop fucking doing it!" yelled a voice from the crowd.

For years tyre giant Goodyear has been trying to stem losses at a plant in northern France, but has failed to persuade unions to agree to its plans. Now it wants to close the factory, and the battle has moved to the courts. How much longer can the struggle continue?

The burly man stands in front of me with folded arms like a bouncer at a night club. "No way," he says. "You can't go in. The lawyer is talking and that's secret."

Through the glass doors I can see rows of workers from the American-owned Goodyear tyre factory, sitting and listening intently. Many wear red T shirts which say Patrons Voyous - the Bosses Are Thugs. They all belong to the CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) the country's largest trade union.

Eventually I am allowed into the hall to hear a rousing speech from Mickael Wamen, the union's representative at the Goodyear plant. There are loud cheers and fists in the air as he announces the latest tactic - blocking the factory entrance from 4am on Monday morning.

He is in a defiant mood as he tells me about a string of legal victories which have so far prevented the US company from closing the factory with the loss of 1,173 jobs.

Last week, for the first time, a judge ruled in Goodyear's favour. A court in Nanterre rejected the union's case that the tyre manufacturer had violated the correct procedures when informing the union about the closure plan. But Wamen and his union are undaunted, and will appeal.

Employees have also filed a complaint in the state court in Akron, Ohio where Goodyear is based. Seeking $4m in damages and class-action status for their case, they claim the company has violated laws on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Goodyear must certainly be the only multinational in the world where workers have resisted so much," Wamen says. "First of all they wanted to sack 400 of us then it was 800 then they said they wanted to close the factory altogether. But we have resisted every step of the way."

Riots in the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang have killed 27 people, state media reported, but overseas Uyghur groups questioned the official version of events.

Frequent outbreaks of violence have hit Xinjiang, where the arrival of waves of Han Chinese people over the decades has fueled tensions with the Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group.

The latest bout of unrest took place early Wednesday in the remote township of Lukqun, about 250 kilometers southeast of the regional capital of Urumqi, Chinese state-run media reported.

"Knife-wielding mobs attacked the township's police stations, the local government building and a construction site, stabbing people and setting fire to police cars," state-run newspaper China Daily reported, attributing the information to officials with Xinjiang's regional committee of the ruling Communist Party.

The official broadcaster CCTV posted pictures of burnt out cars in front of a police station whose facade was singed black in places.

Amid the violence, officials told China Daily, eight civilians, nine police officers and security guards, and 10 rioters died.